System Olympia interview: “My sexuality is interconnected to my emotional life like my sound is connected to my overall vision. It’s not a branding choice.”

Sensual electronics from London-based, Italian-born producer

“My aesthetic comes from the life that I live and how I live it, the way I look at myself and other women,” says producer, DJ and label head System Olympia. 

“My sexuality is interconnected to my emotional life like my sound is connected to my overall vision,” she continues. “It’s not a branding choice, nor a marketing strategy.” 

The artist, real name Francesca Macri, has taken myriad synth-driven adventures over recent years, all of which have added up to a wild ride through leftfield sonic pastures, as inspired as much by her love for italo soundtracks as erotic literature. 

Originally growing up in Italy, she now calls London home, a city where she has forged her own electronic identity as an artist, DJ and boss of the Okay Nature label. 

Francesca spent many of her formative musical years in Los Angeles, connecting with a social circle all enraptured by funk, soul and jazz. During her time in the US, she lived in a house perched atop a hill in Echo Park surrounded by a group of musicians. 

“The first sparks started there,” Francesca explains. “We had a friend who was a dealer with a huge passion and talent for music, so he would pay for rent, food and many many synths for my friends to make records for his label.” 

“The house was like an electro/funk Big Brother with a GTA look and soundtrack. We would drive around LA in a 1974 Lincoln Continental and think and talk about music 24/7.” 

At the time, Francesca had only just begun experimenting with her own musical creations and hadn’t yet ventured into the world of production. Instead she would make meals for her housemates, soaking up the culture, knowledge and musical passions she was exposed to and shared. 

“The records that came out during that period are now some of the most precious in my collection,” she states. “Those sounds and people are definitely part of the inspiration for the music that I went and created later.” 

Francesca’s first EP as System Olympia was ‘Dusk & Dreamland’, full of smoky electronic textures and rolled out to plenty of praise back in 2017. It led to her debut NTS show, made up of her own productions, a mix adored by Pitchfork while DJ Harvey featured her track, ‘Close to my Nebula’ on his mix, ‘The Sound of Mercury Rising Vol II’.

“Things kinda never stopped after I released my first record but it was only when I took matters into my own hands with my label that my music really started circulating more,” says Francesca. “I was able to give my music the attention, investment and push that it needed.”

Plenty of well-heeled synthesised music veering between nocturnal melancholy and dancefloor nous has landed in its wake. 2023’s New Erotica Collection and 2020’s Delta of Venus are two highlights from her discography, encapsulating her passion for noir wave and eighties synths, all beamed through a cinematic lens while her latest release, the ‘Sanctified’ EP, continues to plough a similarly dreamy creative furrow.

Born out of her home studio, Francesca’s production process is currently more stripped back than before. She has sold all her vintage gear, currently uses Ableton, VSTs and a couple of synths. Living in London has helped her find her own creative dimension, a head space she has previously never found.

“It allowed me to fully concentrate on my art,” she says. “Also having a child forced me to settle and gave me the stability I needed in order to be consistent. Maybe also the gloomy weather inspires me to stay home and work more too. I’m a lot less introspective and productive when the sun is shining outside. Years ago I used to carry my Juno 60 to Italy in the summer in the hope of making music while on holiday and I don’t think I even switched it on once.”

The new EP delves into what is described as “love, longing and the restlessness of the heart”. According to Franscesca, the track ‘Mi Dimentico’ encapsulates the main themes of the EP, the lovelorn emotions bound up in all four tracks.  

“I was starting to get into someone new and I knew things would end eventually because they all do,” she says. “I wrote the song imagining the moment in the future when I would have to let him go. It talks about me looking at this person from afar and remembering how he would look at me at the start, how I would be in pain but pretend to be okay because that’s what I always do.” 

The song’s melancholy nature is underlined by a music video she shot on an iPhone in her friend’s car. The push and pull between the sweetness of the main melody and the darker synth pads encapsulates the warm-blooded life that thrums at the heart of System Olympia’s music. 

“He doesn’t know any of this and doesn’t need to know,” Francesca explains of the track’s muse. 

“In fact, I wrote the song for something more universal than me and him, something that no matter how many words or music I put in, will continue as a cycle forever because it’s embedded in the nature of all things.” 

With the new EP now released, her NTS show ongoing, Francesca is turning her thoughts to new music and future live shows. Whatever the wind takes her, she’s planning on continuing her evocative musical explorations. It’s an endeavour that sustains her. 

She says: “When you manage to master the art of pouring your own heart into music or whatever else whilst remaining true to your own mind, eyes and ears, the result can only be unique and irreplicable.”

Jim Ottewill

Buy ‘Sanctified’ on 12″ vinyl by clicking here

Live/DJ dates

01/03/2024 Helsinki – Kaiku

08/03/2024 Brussels – Los Niños

15/03/2024 Bordeaux – IBoat

27/04/2024 Leeds – Headrow House

18/05/2024 Benalup Casas Viejas – Wakana Lake Reunion

31/05/2024 Sanremo – Botanica Festival

28/06/2024 Brussels – Paradise City

21/07/2024 Cluj – Electric Castle

23-24/08/2024 Lincolnshire – Lost Village